UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums UBB.threads Installation and Upgrade Support Upgrading to 7.7.5: Error:

Upgraded php from 5.4 to 7.4.16
Started getting these messages:
Deprecated: __autoload() is deprecated, use spl_autoload_register() instead in /home/wsmith/html/board/libs/phpmailer/PHPMailerAutoload.php on line 45

So decided to upgrade UBB from 7.6.1.1 to 7.7.5
During the upgrad, after the screen:
Config file update

The next screen shows:
/home/wsmith/html/board/styles/ubbthreads_1617365481.css.php is not writeable. Please fix permissions and refresh this page.
But there's no such file.

Help!

Looks like it is a style from your old UBB version.
Somehow it is hosed.
Might be due to ubb 7.6 is not compatible with php 7.x

If it were me I would downgrade php back to 5.4
Reload a backup of your files and database.
Ensure all file and folder permissions are correct according the document for install.
Make sure it is working correctly
While you are at this point you may want to check for that file but it would normally be like ubbthreads_1617365481.css without the php

Then upload your ubb7.7.5 files per the upgrade document
run install/upgrade.php

Then switch php to 7.x

The UBB.threads CSS files are generated through a trigger when you update a style from the Control Panel; these files always end in .css. PHP files in the /styles folder should only be wrappers.php which holds your installed style HTML wrappers and a numerated file (such as 1.php) which contain the information about each style.

You should not have any .php files other than these, you might want to look through backups or see if there is a period in front of the file in your logs (if a filename is prefixed by a period it'll be hidden from FTP clients unless they're specifically set to display hidden files), you'll want to open this file to ensure its even a forum file or if someone is hiding PHP script content masquerading it as a legit file.

FWIW, the UBB.threads v7.7.5 upgrade utility should have no problem working on PHP7 and supports MySQL8.

Thank you, Gizmo and Ruben, for your suggestions.

Rolling back php creates a big mess and breaks a lot of things, so did not try that. Looked for but couldn't find any dot files in the styles directory.

Ultimately, I decided to take a chance. Created a zero-byte writeable file ubbthreads_1617365481.css.php that the upgrade script was looking for. Resumed the upgrade and it went through! After the upgrade I checked to see what happened to that file. Still the same zero byte file.

Anyway, things are good now.

Thanks again for your responsiveness. I appreciate it.

I'm glad to hear that you got it sorted; there have been a significant amount of updates since v7.6.1.1, you can see the various changes at UBBWiki: Changelog Index

Shared with the users What's New. Thank you.

Changelogs in detail are over here
https://www.ubbcentral.com/changelog.php